Blackpool FC

Blackpool Football Club are an English football club founded in 1887 from the Lancashire seaside town of Blackpool. They are competing the 2010–11 season in the Premier League, the top tier of professional football in England, having won the Football League Championship play-off Final at the end of the 2009–10 campaign, their 100th consecutive season in the Football League. It is their debut in the Premier League, and it is their first appearance in England's top flight since 1971. It completes a climb of four divisions in nine years. They hold the record for being the only club in English football to be promoted through all four divisions via the play-offs.

The club's home ground has been Bloomfield Road since 1901, and their main nicknames are the Seasiders, the 'Pool and the Tangerines, the latter in reference to the colour of their home kit, which is often mistaken for orange. Their motto is Progress, as featured on the club crest. They have a fierce local rivalry with Preston North End. Meetings between the two clubs are known as the West Lancashire derby.

Blackpool's most notable achievement is winning the 1953 FA Cup Final, the so-called "Matthews Final", in which they beat Bolton Wanderers 4–3, overturning a 1–3 deficit in the closing stages of the game. During that post-war period, Blackpool made three Wembley appearances in six years and came close to winning the League Championship on several occasions. They also supplied the national teams with many players, notably for England in 1953 when four Blackpool men lined up at Wembley, causing the Daily Mirror to declare that "Blackpool F.C. are playing Hungary today", though it became a day that English football fans would rather forget. Their least successful period came in the 1980s, and in 1982–83 they finished 21st in English League football's lowest tier, their lowest-ever League finish.

The club has been managed since May 2009 by Ian Holloway, who guided them to the Premier League in his first season in charge. At the end of the 2009–10 season, Holloway's win-percentage in League matches as Blackpool manager was 41.3%, which places him sixth out of the club's twenty-five full-time managers.